What a dreadful piece of gamesmanship here from Norwich City striker Johan Elmander. During last night’s World CUp Qualifier between Sweden and Austria, the journeyman forward squared up with Stoke’s Marko Arnautovic with little or actually no contact made between their two heads. However, that didn’t stop Elmander dropping to the ground like he’d been battered by Delia Smith after a night on the sherry. Appalling, nasty behaviour.

How can these players keep getting away with this. We have at least 3-4 TV cameras pointed at this incident, you can watch it in slo-mo countless times, and still the governing body will do nothing about the real offender, which is Elmander in this case. It makes me want to switch to rugby where honesty and integrity are upheld.

Fucking cheating bastard- sums up what is wrong with’professional’ football when a mediocre journeyman wankstain can resort to this against a better opponent. Yes, I am a Stoke fan, and Arnie has bollocks unlike the Swedish fanny.

I think refs should realize that when players drop instantly like that they havent been hit at all (or not hard enough and they are making a feast of it). No actual hit results in an instant drop like that. Elmander should be retrospectively banned but I feel refs should begin to pick up on the “insta-drop” of divers

Great point Al, ideally when scuffles like this arise the ref would wait for information from another official who’d consulted video footage before making a decision. I have to wonder whether refs alone are capable of dealing with situations like this nowadays, given how often they seem to happen and how retrospective punishments are non-existant. What’s in it for the authorities that they just allow players to get away with such behaviour every time?